What’s in a word? What is it that keeps us coming back to some words more than others?

There are your basic words, such as those I’ve used here.. and there are those words that manage to convey so much more.

Such as one of my favorites recently, Passion. It’s used to describe a state of being, a feeling, an energy that pervades every aspect of a moment, of a lifetime. It can also be used to describe an utter lack of something, They have no Passion for their work.

Some time ago I was reading books on Nostradamus, and the translation of his work, that discusses the end times being tied to the end of language. When we lose our language as humans.

And I felt as though, after reading too many twitter posts and texts, that it certainly could describe our current state of “language”.

However I’ve also discovered other words, that wipe away the melancholy I feel when reading expressions of joy as “OMG I ROFL’D” or grief “FML” (I’m not saying I don’t use these words, but I desperately try to express myself fully whenever, and wherever possible).

Not all of these words are “new” per se, some are simply fascinating rarely used words that describe something so sublimely, you rarely need any other words before, or after, to finish up the communication.

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

Now, I like Sonder. It is something that just rolls off the tongue and sinks in to the mind.

Sonder.

People’s interpretation of this word, beyond this description here is even more fascinating.

One woman writes of it as a word to describe how unimportant we are, just one person in this grand universe.

But I don’t see that, I don’t hear that… I think of how profound that can actually make us, in each others lives, that rather than becoming the extra in the background, we use it to become a light in the dark.

And a reminder that we aren’t alone, ever, in our sorrow, our joy, our confusion or contemplation.. that even as we sit reading our LOL texts and perusing facebook on our little phones, getting wrapped up in this tangled world wide web we weave, we aren’t alone.